CHAPTER XXVII.
THE LOVE OF THE AMAZON.
Before the sun had declined from his zenith the French were masters ofthe field, and pursued the retreat of the Arabs till, for miles alongthe plain, the line of their flight was marked with horses that haddropped dead in the strain, and with the motionless forms of theirdesert-riders, their cold hands clinched in the loose, hot sands, andtheir stern faces turned upward to the cloudless scorch of their nativeskies, under whose freedom they would never again ride forth to thejoyous clash of the cymbals and the fierce embrace of the death-grapple.
When at length she returned, coming in with her ruthless Spahis, whoseterrible passions she feared no more than Vergil's Volscian huntressfeared the beasts of the forest and plain, the raven still hovered aboveher exhausted mare, the torn flag was still in her left hand; and thebright laughter, the flash of ecstatic triumph, was still in her faceas she sang the last lines of her own war-chant. The leopard naturewas roused in her. She was a soldier; death had been about her from herbirth; she neither feared to give nor to receive it; she was proud asever was young Pompeius flushed with the glories of his first easternconquests; she was happy as such elastic, sun-lit, dauntless youth ashers alone can be, returning in the reddening after-glow, at the head ofher comrades, to the camp that she had saved.
She could be cruel--women are, when roused, as many a revolution hasshown; she could be heroic--she would have died a hundred deaths forFrance; she was vain with a vivacious, childlike vanity; she was bravewith a bravery beside which many a man's high courage paled. Cruelty,heroism, vanity, and bravery were all on fire, and all fed to theiruttermost, most eager, most ardent flame, now that she came back at thehead of her Spahis; while all who remained of the soldiers who, but forher, would have been massacred long ere then, without one sparedamong them, threw themselves forward, crowded round her, caressed, andlaughed, and wept, and shouted with all the changes of their intensemercurial temperaments; kissed her boots, her sash, her mare's droopingneck, and, lifting her, with wild vivas that rent the sky, on to theshoulders of the two tallest men among them, bore her to the presence ofthe only officer of high rank who had survived the terrors of the day, aChef de Bataillon of the Zouaves.
And he, a grave and noble-looking veteran, uncovered his head and bowedbefore her as courtiers bow before their queens.
"Mademoiselle, you saved the honor of France. In the name of France, Ithank you."
The tears rushed swift and hot into Cigarette's bright eyes--tears ofjoy, tears of pride. She was but a child still in much, and she couldbe moved by the name of France as other children by the name of theirmothers.
"Chut! I did nothing," she said rapidly. "I only rode fast."
The frenzied hurrahs of the men who heard her drowned her words. Theyloved her for what she had done; they loved her better still because sheset no count on it.
"The Empire will think otherwise," said the Major of the Zouaves. "Tellme, my Little One, how did you do this thing?"
Cigarette, balancing herself with a foot on either shoulder of hersupporters, gave the salute, and answered:
"Simply, mon Commandant--very simply. I was alone, riding midway betweenyou and the main army--three leagues, say, from each. I was all alone;only Vole-qui-veut flying with me for fun. I met a colon. I knew theman. For the matter of that, I did him once a service--saved his geeseand his fowls from burning, one winter's day, in their house, while hewrung his hands and looked on. Well, he was full of terror, and told methere was fighting yonder--here he meant--so I rode nearer to see.That was just upon sunrise. I dismounted, and ran up a palm there." AndCigarette pointed to a far-off slope crowned with the remains of a oncemighty palm forest. "I got up very high. I could see miles round. I sawhow things were with you. For the moment I was coming straight to you.Then I thought I should do more service if I let the main army know, andbrought you a re-enforcement. I rode fast. Dieu! I rode fast. My horsedropped under me twice; but I reached them at last, and I went at onceto the General. He guessed at a glance how things were, and I told himto give me my Spahis and let me go. So he did. I got on the mare ofhis own staff, and away we came. It was a near thing. If we had been aminute later, it had been all up with you."
"True, indeed," muttered the Zouave in his beard. "A superb action, myLittle One. But did you meet no Arab scouts to stop you?"
Cigarette laughed.
"Did I not? Met them by dozens. Some had a shot at me; some had ashot from me. One fellow nearly winged me; but I got through them allsomehow. Sapristi! I galloped so fast I was very hard to hit flying.These things only require a little judgment; but some men, pardi! alwaysare creeping when they should fly, and always are scampering when theyshould saunter; and then they wonder when they make fiasco! Bah!"
And Cigarette laughed again. Men were such bunglers--ouf!
"Mademoiselle, if all soldiers were like you," answered the Major ofZouaves curtly, "to command a battalion would be paradise!"
"All soldiers would do anything I have done," retorted Cigarette, whonever took a compliment at the expense of her "children." "They do notall get the opportunity, look you. Opportunity is a little angel; somecatch him as he goes, some let him pass by forever. You must be quickwith him, for he is like an eel to wriggle away. If you want a goodsoldier, take that aristocrat of the Chasse-Marais--that beau Victor.Pouf! All his officers were down; and how splendidly he led the troop!He was going to die with them rather than surrender. Napoleon"--andCigarette uncovered her curly head reverentially as at the name of adeity--"Napoleon would have given him his brigade ere this. If you hadseen him kill the chief!"
"He will have justice done him, never fear. And for you--the Crossshall be on your breast, Cigarette, if I live over to-night to write mydispatches."
And the Chef de Bataillon saluted her once more, and turned away to viewthe carnage-strewn plain, and number the few who remained out of thosewho had been wakened by the clash of the Arab arms in the gray of theearliest dawn.
Cigarette's eyes flashed like sun playing on water, and her flushedcheeks grew scarlet. Since her infancy it had been her dream to have theCross, to have the Grande Croix to lie above her little lion's heart; ithad been the one longing, the one ambition, the only undying desire ofher soul; and lo! she touched its realization!
The wild, frantic, tumultuous cheers and caresses of her soldiery, whocould not triumph in her and triumph with her enough to satiate them,recalled her to the actual moment. She sprang down from her elevation,and turned on them with a rebuke. "Ah! you are making this fuss about mewhile hundreds of better soldiers than I lie yonder. Let us look to themfirst; we will play the fool afterward."
And, though she had ridden fifty miles that day, if she had riddenone--though she had eaten nothing since sunrise, and had only had onedraught of bad water--though she was tired, and stiff, and bruised, andparched with thirst, Cigarette dashed off as lightly as a young goatto look for the wounded and the dying men who strewed the plain far andnear.
She remembered one whom she had not seen after that first moment inwhich she had given the word to the squadrons to charge.
It was a terrible sight--the arid plain, lying in the scarlet glow ofsunset, covered with dead bodies, with mutilated limbs, with horsesgasping and writhing, with men raving like mad creatures in the tortureof their wounds. It was a sight which always went to her heart. She wasa true soldier, and, though, she could deal death pitilessly, could,when the delirium of war was over, tend and yield infinite compassionto those who were in suffering. But such scenes had been familiar to herfrom the earliest years when, on an infant's limbs, she had toddled oversuch battlefields, and wound tiny hands in the hair of some dead trooperwho had given her sweetmeats the hour before, vainly trying to awakenhim. And she went through all the intense misery and desolation of thescene now without shrinking, and with that fearless, tender devotion tothe wounded which Cigarette showed in common with other soldiers of hernation; being, like them, a young lion in the combat, but
a creatureunspeakably gentle and full of sympathy when the fury of the fight wasover.
She had seen great slaughter often enough, but even she had not seen anystruggle more close, more murderous, than this had been. The dead layby hundreds; French and Arab locked in one another's limbs as they hadfallen when the ordinary mode of warfare had failed to satiate theirviolence, and they had wrestled together like wolves fighting andrending each other over a disputed carcass. The bitterness and thehatred of the contest were shown in the fact that there were very fewmerely wounded or disabled; almost all the numbers that strewed theplain were dead. It had been a battle-royal, and, but for her arrivalwith the fresh squadrons, not one among her countrymen would have livedto tell the story of this terrible duello which had been as magnificentin heroism as any Austerlitz or Gemappes, but which would passunhonored, almost unnamed, among the futile, fruitless heroisms ofAlgerian warfare.
"Is he killed? Is he killed?" she thought, as she bent over each knot ofmotionless bodies, where, here and there, some faint, stifled breath, orsome moan of agony, told that life still lingered beneath the huddled,stiffening heap. And a tightness came at her heart, an aching fear madeher shrink, as she raised each hidden face, that she had never knownbefore. "What if he be?" she said fiercely to herself. "It is nothing tome. I hate him, the cold aristocrat! I ought to be glad if I see him liehere."
But, despite her hatred for him, she could not banish that hot, feverishhope, that cold, suffocating fear, which, turn by turn, quickened andslackened the bright flow of her warm, young blood as she searched amongthe slain.
"Ah! le pauvre Picpon!" she said softly, as she reached at last theplace where the young Chasseur lay, and lifted the black curls offhis forehead. The hoofs of the charging cavalry had cruelly struck andtrampled his frame; the back had been broken, and the body had beenmashed as in a mortar under the thundering gallop of the Horse; but theface was still uninjured, and had a strange, pathetic beauty, a calm andsmiling courage on it. It was ashen pale; but the great black eyes thathad glistened in such malicious mirth, and sparkled in such malignantmischief during life, were open, and had a mournful, pitiful serenity intheir look as if from their depths the soul still gazed--that soul whichhad been neglected and cursed, and left to wander among evil ways,yet which, through all its darkness, all its ignorance, had reached,unguided, to love and to nobility.
Cigarette closed their long, black lashes down on the white cheeks withsoft and reverent touch; she had seen that look ere now on the upturnedfaces of the dead who had strewn the barricades of Paris, with the wordsof the Marseillaise the last upon their lips.
To her there could be no fate fairer, no glory more glorious, than thisof his--to die for France. And she laid him gently down, and left him,and went on with her quest.
It was here that she had lost sight of Cecil as they had chargedtogether, and her mare, enraged and intoxicated with noise and terror,had torn away at full speed that had outstripped even the swiftest ofher Spahis. A little farther on a dog's moan caught her ear; she turnedand looked across. Upright, among a ghastly pile of men and chargers,sat the small, snowy poodle of the Chasseurs, beating the air with itslittle paws, as it had been taught to do when it needed anything, andhowling piteously as it begged.
"Flick-Flack? What is it, Flick-Flack?" she cried to him, while, with abound, she reached the spot. The dog leaped on her, rejoicing. The deadwere thick there--ten or twelve deep--French trooper and Bedouin riderflung across each other, horribly entangled with the limbs, the manes,the shattered bodies of their own horses. Among them she saw the faceshe sought, as the dog eagerly ran back, caressing the hair of a soldierwho lay underneath the weight of his gray charger, that had been killedby a musket-ball.
Cigarette grew very pale, as she had never grown when the hailstorm ofshots had been pouring on her in the midst of a battle; but, with therapid skill and strength she had acquired long before, she reached theplace, lifted aside first one, then another of the lifeless Arabs thathad fallen above him, and drew out from beneath the suffocating pressureof his horse's weight the head and the frame of the Chasseur whomFlick-Flack had sought out and guarded.
For a moment she thought him dead; then, as she drew him out wherethe cooled breeze of the declining day could reach him, a slow breath,painfully drawn, moved his chest; she saw that he was unconscious fromthe stifling oppression under which he had been buried since the noon;an hour more without the touch of fresher air, and life would have beenextinct.
Cigarette had with her the flask of brandy that she always brought onsuch errands as these; she forced the end between his lips, and pouredsome down his throat; her hand shook slightly as she did so, a weaknessthe gallant little campaigner never before then had known.
It revived him in a degree; he breathed more freely, though heavily,and with difficulty still; but gradually the deadly, leaden color of hisface was replaced by the hue of life, and his heart began to beat moreloudly. Consciousness did not return to him; he lay motionless andsenseless, with his head resting on her lap, and with Flick-Flack, ineager affection, licking his hands and his hair.
"He was as good as dead, Flick-Flack, if it had not been for you andme," said Cigarette, while she wetted his lips with more brandy. "Ah,bah! and he would be more grateful, Flick-Flack, for a scornful scofffrom Milady!"
Still, though she thought this, she let his head lie on her lap, and, asshe looked down on him, there was the glisten as of tears in thebrave, sunny eyes of the little Friend of the Flag. She was of a vivid,voluptuous, artistic nature; she was thoroughly woman-like in herpassions and her instincts, though she so fiercely contemned womanhood.If he had not been beautiful she would never have looked twice at him,never once have pitied his fate.
And he was beautiful still, though his hair was heavy with dew and dust;though his face was scorched with powder; though his eyes were closed aswith the leaden weight of death, and his beard was covered with the redstain of blood that had flowed from the lance-wound on his shoulder.
He was not dead; he was not even in peril of death. She knew enough ofmedical lore to know that it was but the insensibility of exhaustion andsuffocation; and she did not care that he should waken. She dropped herhead over him, moving her hand softly among the masses of his curls,and watching the quickening beatings of his heart under the bare, strongnerves. Her face grew tender, and warm, and eager, and melting with amarvelous change of passionate hues. She had all the ardor of southernblood; without a wish he had wakened in her a love that grew daily andhourly, though she would not acknowledge it. She loved to see him liethere as though he were asleep, to cheat herself into the fancy thatshe watched his rest to wake it with a kiss on his lips. In thatunconsciousness, in that abandonment, he seemed wholly her own; passionwhich she could not have analyzed made her bend above him with ahalf-fierce, half-dreamy delight in that solitary possession of hisbeauty, of his life.
The restless movements of little Flick-Flack detached a piece oftwine passed round his favorite's throat; the glitter of gold arrestedCigarette's eyes. She caught what the poodle's impatient caresshad broken from the string. It was a small, blue-enamel medallionbonbon-box, with a hole through it by which it had been slung--a tinytoy once costly, now tarnished, for it had been carried through manyrough scenes and many years of hardship; had been bent by blows struckat the breast against which it rested, and was clotted now with blood.Inside it was a woman's ring, of sapphires and opals.
She looked at both close, in the glow of the setting sun; then passedthe string through and fastened the box afresh. It was a mere trifle,but it sufficed to banish her dream; to arouse her to contemptuous,impatient bitterness with that new weakness that had for the hour brokenher down to the level of this feverish folly. He was beautiful--yes!She could not bring herself to hate him; she could not help the brimmingtears blinding her eyes when she looked at him, stretched senselessthus. But he was wedded to his past; that toy in his breast, whatever itmight be, whatever tale might cling to it, was sweeter to h
im than herlips would ever be. Bah! there were better men than he; why had she notlet him lie and die as he might, under the pile of dead?
Bah! she could have killed herself for her folly! She, who had scores oflovers, from princes, to piou-pious, and never had a heartache for oneof them, to go and care for a silent "ci-devant," who had never evennoticed that her eyes had any brightness or her face had any charm!
"You deserve to be shot--you!" said Cigarette, fiercely abusing herselfas she put his head off her lap, and rose abruptly and shouted to aTringlo, who was at some distance searching for the wounded. "Here is aChasse-Marais with some breath in him," she said curtly, as the man withhis mule-cart and his sad burden of half-dead, moaning, writhing framesdrew near to her summons. "Put him in. Soldiers cost too much trainingto waste them on jackals and kites, if one can help it. Lift himup--quick!"
"He is badly hurt?" said the Tringlo.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, no! I have had worse scratches myself. The horse fell on him, thatwas the mischief. I never saw a prettier thing--every Lascar has killedhis own little knot of Arbicos. Look how nice and neat they lie."
Cigarette glanced over the field, with the satisfied appreciation ofa dilettante glancing over a collection unimpeachable for accuracy andarrangement; and drank a toss of her brandy, and lighted her littleamber pipe, and sang loudly, as she did so, the gayest ballad of theLangue Verte.
She was not going to have him imagine she cared for that Chasseurwhom he lifted up on his little wagon with so kindly a care--not she!Cigarette was as proud in her way as was ever the Princesse VenetiaCorona.
Nevertheless, she kept pace with the mules, carrying little Flick-Flack,and never paused on her way, though she passed scores of dead Arabs,whose silver ornaments and silk embroideries, commonly replenished theknapsack and adorned in profusion the uniform of the young filibuster;being gleaned by her, right and left, as her lawful harvest after thefray.
"Leave him there. I will have a look at him," she said, at the firstempty tent they reached. The camp had been the scene of as fierce astruggle as the part of the plain which the cavalry had held, and it wasstrewn with the slaughter of Zouaves and Tirailleurs. The Tringlo obeyedher, and went about his errand of mercy. Cigarette, left alone with thewounded man, lying insensible still on a heap of forage, ceased her songand grew very quiet. She had a certain surgical skill, learned asher untutored genius learned most things, with marvelous rapidity,by observation and intuition; and she had saved many a life by herknowledge and her patient attendance on the sufferers--patience that shehad been famed for when she had been only six years old, and a surgeonof the Algerian regiments had affirmed that he could trust her to be aswakeful, as watchful, and as sure to obey his directions as though shewere a Soeur de Charite. Now, "the little fagot of opposites," as Cecilhad called her, put this skill into active use.
The tent had been a scullion's tent; the poor marmiton had been killed,and lay outside, with his head clean severed by an Arab flissa; his firehad gone out, but his brass pots and pans, his jar of fresh water, andhis various preparations for the General's dinner were still there. TheGeneral was dead also; far yonder, where he had fallen in the van of hisZouaves, exposing himself with all the splendid, reckless gallantryof France; and the soup stood unserved; the wild plovers were taken byFlick-Flack; the empty dishes waited for the viands which there were nohands to prepare and no mouths to eat. Cigarette glanced round, and sawall with one flash of her eyes; then she knelt down beside the heapof forage, and, for the first thing, dressed his wounds with the cold,clear water, and washed away the dust and the blood that covered hisbreast.
"He is too good a soldier to die; one must do it for France," she saidto herself, in a kind of self-apology. And as she did it, and bound thelance-gash close, and bathed his breast, his forehead, his hair, hisbeard, free from the sand and the powder and the gore, a thousandchanges swept over her mobile face. It was one moment soft, and flushed,and tender as passion; it was the next jealous, fiery, scornful, pale,and full of impatient self-disdain.
He was nothing to her--morbleu! He was an aristocrat, and she was achild of the people. She had been besieged by dukes and had floutedprinces; she had borne herself in such gay liberty, such vivaciousfreedom, such proud and careless sovereignty--bah! what was it to herwhether this man lived or died? If she saved him, he would give her alow bow as he thanked her; thinking all the while of Milady!
And yet she went on with her work.
Cecil had been stunned by a stroke from his horse's hoof as thepoor beast fell beneath and rolled over him. His wounds werelight--marvelously so, for the thousand strokes that had been aimed athim; but it was difficult to arouse him from unconsciousness, andhis face was white as death where he lay on the heap of dry reeds andgrasses. She began to feel fear of that lengthened syncope; a chill,tight, despairing fear that she had never known in her life before. Sheknelt silent a moment, drawing through her hand the wet locks of hishair with the bright threads of gold gleaming in it.
Then she started up, and, leaving him, found a match, and lighted thedied-out wood afresh; the fire soon blazed up, and she warmed aboveit the soup that had grown cold, poured into it some red wine that wasnear, and forced some, little by little, down his throat. It was withdifficulty at first that she could pass any though his tightly lockedteeth; but by degrees she succeeded, and, only half-conscious still, hedrank it faster; the heat and the strength reviving him as its stimulantwarmed his veins. His eyes did not unclose, but he stirred, moved hislimbs, and, with some muttered words she could not hear, drew a deeperbreath and turned.
"He will sleep now--he is safe," she thought to herself, while she stoodwatching him with a curious conflict of pity, impatience, anger, andrelief at war within her.
Bah! Why was she always doing good services to this man, who only caredfor the blue, serene eyes of a woman who would never give him aughtexcept pain? Why should she take such care to keep the fire of vitalityalight in him, when it had been crushed out in thousands as good as he,who would have no notice save a hasty thrust into the earth; no funeralchant except the screech of the carrion-birds?
Cigarette had been too successful in her rebellion against all weakness,and was far too fiery a young warrior to find refuge or consolation inthe poet's plea,
"How is it under our control to love or not to love?"
To allow anything to gain ascendancy over her that she resisted,to succumb to any conqueror that was unbidden and unwelcome, was asubmission beyond words degrading to the fearless soldier-code of theFriend of the Flag. And yet--there she stayed and watched him. Shetook some food, for she had been fasting all day; then she dropped downbefore the fire she had lighted, and, in one of those soft, curled,kitten-like attitudes that were characteristic of her, kept her vigilover him.
She was bruised, stiff, tired, longing like a tired child to fallasleep; her eyes felt hot as flame; her rounded, supple limbs wereaching, her throat was sore with long thirst and the sand that sheseemed to have swallowed till no draught of water or wine would take thescorched, dry pain out of it. But, as she had given up her fete-day inthe hospital, so she sat now--as patient in the self-sacrifice as shewas impatient when the vivacious agility of her young frame was longingfor the frenzied delights of the dance or the battle.
Yonder she knew, where her Spahis bivouacked on the hard-won field,there were riotous homage, wild applause, intoxicating triumph waitingfor the Little One who had saved the day, if she chose to go out for it;and she loved to be the center of such adoration and rejoicing, with allthe exultant vanity of a child and a hero in one. Here there were warmthof flames, quietness of rest, long hours for slumber; all that herburning eyes and throbbing nerves were longing for, as the sleep shewould not yield to stole on her, and the racking pain of fatigue crampedher bones. But she would not go to the pleasure without, and she wouldnot give way to the weariness that tortured her.
Cigarette could crucify self with a generous courage, all the pure
rbecause it never occurred to her that there was anything of virtue or ofsacrifice in it. She was acting en bon soldat--that was all. Pouf! Thatwanted no thanks.
Silence settled over the camp; half the slain could not be buried, andthe clear, luminous stars rose on the ghastly plateau. All that wereheard were the challenge of sentinels, the tramp of patrols. The guardvisited her once.
She kept herself awake in the little dark tent, only lit by the glow ofthe fire. Dead men were just without, and in the moonlight without, asthe night came on, she could see the severed throat of the scullion, andthe head further off, like a round, gray stone. But that was nothing toCigarette; dead men were no more to her than dead trees are to others.
Every now and then, four or five times in an hour, she gave him whomshe tended the soup or the wine that she kept warmed for him over theembers. He took it without knowledge, sunk half in lethargy, half insleep; but it kept the life glowing in him which, without it, might haveperished of cold and exhaustion as the chills and northerly wind of theevening succeeded to the heat of the day, and pierced through the canvaswalls of the tent. It was very bitter; more keenly felt because of theprevious burning of the sun. There was no cloak or covering to flingover him; she took off her blue cloth tunic and threw it across hischest, and, shivering despite herself, curled closer to the little fire.
She did not know why she did it--he was nothing to her--and yet she keptherself wide awake through the dark autumn night, lest he should sigh orstir and she not hear him.
"I have saved his life twice," she thought, looking at him; "beware ofthe third time, they say!"
He moved restlessly, and she went to him. His face was flushed now; hisbreath came rapidly and shortly; there was some fever on him. The linenwas displaced from his wounds; she dipped it again in water, and laidthe cooled bands on them. "Ah, bah! If I were not unsexed enough forthis, how would it be with you now?" she said in her teeth. He tossedwearily to and fro; detached words caught her ear as he muttered them.
"Let it be, let it be--he is welcome! How could I prove it at his cost?I saved him--I could do that. It was not much----"
She listened with intent anxiety to hear the other whispers ending thesentence, but they were stifled and broken.
"Tiens!" she murmured below her breath. "It is for some other he hasruined himself."
She could not catch the words that followed. They were in an unknownlanguage to her, for she knew nothing of English, and they poured fastand obscure from his lips as he moved in feverish unrest; the wine thathad saved him from exhaustion inflaming his brain in his sleep. Now andthen French phrases crossed the English ones; she leaned down to seizetheir meaning till her cheek was against his forehead, till her lipstouched his hair; and at that half caress her heart beat, her faceflushed, her mouth trembled with a too vivid joy, with an impulse, halffear and half longing, that had never so moved her before.
"If I had my birthright," he muttered in her own tongue. "If I hadit--would she look so cold then? She might love me--women used once. OGod! if she had not looked on me, I had never known all I had lost!"
Cigarette started as if a knife had stabbed her, and sprang up from herrest beside him.
"She--she--always she!" she muttered fiercely, while her face grewduskily scarlet in the fire-glow of the tent; and she went slowly away,back to the low wood fire.
This was to be ever her reward!
Her eyes glistened and flashed with the fiery, vengeful passions of herhot and jealous instincts. Cigarette had in her the violence, as shehad the nobility, of a grand nature that has gone wholly untutored andunguided; and she had the power of southern vengeance in her, though shehad also the swift temper. It was bitter, beyond any other bitternessthat could have wounded her, for the spoilt, victorious, imperious,little empress of the Army of Algeria to feel that, though she had givenhis life twice back to the man, she was less to him than the tiny whitedog that nestled in his breast; that she, who never before had endured aslight, or known what neglect could mean, gave care, and pity, and aid,and even tenderness, to one whose only thought was for a woman who hadaccorded him nothing but a few chill syllables of haughty condescension!
He lay there unconscious of her presence, tossing wearily to and fro infevered, unrefreshing sleep, murmuring incoherent words of French andEnglish strangely mingled; and Cigarette crouched on the ground, withthe firelight playing all over her picturesque, childlike beauty, andher large eyes strained and savage, yet with a strange, wistful painin them; looking out at the moonlight where the headless body lay in acold, gray sea of shadow.
Yet she did not leave him.
She was too generous for that. "What is right is right. He is a soldierof France," she muttered, while she kept her vigil. She felt no want ofsleep; a hard, hateful wakefulness seemed to have banished all rest fromher; she stayed there all the night so, with the touch of water on hisforehead, or of cooled wine to his lips, by the alteration of the linenon his wounds, or the shifting of the rough forage that made his bed.But she did it without anything of that loving, lingering attendanceshe had given before; she never once drew out the task longer than itneeded, or let her hands wander among his hair, or over his lips, as shehad done before.
And he never once was conscious of it; he never once knew that she wasnear. He did not waken from the painful, delirious, stupefied slumberthat had fallen on him; he only vaguely felt that he was suffering pain;he only vaguely dreamed of what he murmured of--his past, and the beautyof the woman who had brought all the memories of that past back on him.
And this was Cigarette's reward--to hear him mutter wearily of the proudeyes and of the lost smile of another!
The dawn came at last; her constant care and the skill with which shehad cooled and dressed his wounds had done him infinite service; thefever had subsided, and toward morning his incoherent words ceased, hisbreathing grew calmer and more tranquil; he fell asleep--sleep that wasprofound, dreamless, and refreshing.
She looked at him with a tempestuous shadow darkening her face, thatwas soft with a tenderness that she could not banish. She hated him; sheought to have stabbed or shot him rather than have tended him thus; heneglected her, and only thought of that woman of his old Order. As adaughter of the People, as a child of the Army, as a soldier of France,she ought to have killed him rather than have caressed his hair andsoothed his pain! Pshaw! She ground one in another her tiny white teeth,that were like a spaniel's.
Then gently, very gently, lest she should waken him, she took her tunicskirt with which she had covered him from the chills of the night, putmore broken wood on the fading fire, and with a last, lingering lookat him where he slept, passed out from the tent as the sun rose in aflushed and beautiful dawn. He would never know that she had saved himthus: he never should know it, she vowed in her heart.
Cigarette was very haughty in her own wayward, careless fashion. At aword of love from him, at a kiss from his lips, at a prayer from hisvoice, she would have given herself to him in all the abandonment of afirst passion, and have gloried in being known as his mistress. But shewould have perished by a thousand deaths rather than have sought himthrough his pity or through his gratitude; rather than have accepted thecompassion of a heart that gave its warmth to another; rather than haveever let him learn that he was any more to her than all their othercountless comrades who filled up the hosts of Africa.
"He will never know," she said to herself, as she passed through thedisordered camp, and in a distant quarter coiled herself among the hayof a forage-wagon, and covered up in dry grass, like a bird in a nest,let her tired limbs lie and her aching eyes close in repose. She wasvery tired; and every now and then, as she slept, a quick, sobbingbreath shook her as she slumbered, like a worn-out fawn who has beenwounded while it played.